


A Sleep Taken in Liquor

by raedbard



Category: Deadwood, The West Wing
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-17
Updated: 2008-09-17
Packaged: 2017-10-06 12:59:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raedbard/pseuds/raedbard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Ellsworth is a shadow at the end of the bar the night they get a new stranger in town."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sleep Taken in Liquor

**Author's Note:**

> for toby_wan in the 'first kisses' meme.

Ellsworth is a shadow at the end of the bar the night they get a new stranger in town.

He limps into the Gem, left leg trailing the other a little. That doesn't raise a glance from any of the Gem's swells and no-one but Ellsworth would have noticed his sorry self if he'd not walked straight into a table soon as he got under the threshold. Dan Dority gifts his new patron a steady look that don't so much as twitch back towards the rifle over the bar; it don't need to. The man's face is black under his hat, all dark beard and eyes. But he don't look like trouble, not tonight anyway. He drops right into the seat next to Ellsworth - and 'drop' is the right word for it. His gimp knee clatters against the bar, along with what might be plain boot or might be sharp knife; Ellsworth's not certain. But he finds himself hoping the stranger has a little something tucked away, as insurance against the darkness of the night and the hunger of the pigs.

He grunts out a request (_whiskey_, no other word more or less'n that) and then proceeds to near cough his guts up across the bar, and gets himself the reward of another significant look off Dan and a quick swipe of Dan's cloth under his nose along and up the wood.

"If you're fuckin' carrying fuckin' plague," Dan says, "Then you'd best get gone right quick."

The stranger looks up from his whiskey, cradled between his two hands, and stares up at Dan. He don't move, nor flinch from the turn of Dan's shoulders round towards the rifle which ain't a bit goddamn unclear this time around, just looks and looks under his black eyebrows and his mud-brown hat, unmoving. The immovable fucking object. Only it turns out Dan's force ain't exactly irresistible.

Dan looks away first; the stranger looks back down into the whiskey; Ellsworth looks at him.

He's covered in the filth of the hills, but what man among them ain't? Ellsworth stares at a gash of mud smeared across his cheek, crossing across into his beard. It makes his lips dark but since he never opens them to say but a word, that dark never lifts. Ellsworth finds that as he continues to look he wishes for that maw to open, right wet and slick inside, like a deep sleep taken in liquor.

This is a man with the stink of death on him - a wife, or a child, someone dear. Someone in his eyes, but he's not tellin'. His clothes are cut fancy, but his sneer is all made of dirt. There ain't no dried blood on his face but around his collar there are red stains turned brown; too much for it to be a fuckin' shaving accident. He sits absolutely still, like a man hurting in every bone and muscle; hurting too much for sleep or food or fucking. Only alive enough to keep on throwing down the liquor.

He ain't saying nothing, and it seems like he'd very much prefer to keep it that fine way, but Ellsworth opens his stupid mouth anyway, just to see what might come of it.

"You look," Ellsworth says, not knowing why he's made it his business to, "If you'll excuse me sayin' so, like you've taken a bit of a tumble there, stranger."

Dark eyes turn on Ellsworth this time. They look him up and down, in less than a second. And Ellsworth reels back from the stare, like he's taken a shot too many, or been punched on the jaw. The stranger only says,

"Yeah."

"It's a hard town," Ellsworth says.

"Reckon that's why we're all here." The stranger chuckles, a sound that should be mirthless and cold as fucking ice but isn't, not even close. This is a fluid sound, it shimmers like daylight, it knows and understands the stone in the hills and the mud in the claims, it is acquainted with pain - shakes its hand in the morning and receives its kisses at the close of the day. Ellsworth stares. "Some kind of fucking Purgatory we got, right here," the stranger says.

They drink, and they don't say any more. Ellsworth is seeing daylight in the nighttime by the close of business - stars lurking in the corners of his eyes. The stranger's limp doesn't improve with whiskey, nor does his mouth get any looser. Not for talking, in any event.

Outside the pig pen, one hand on the fence like a fucking game of chicken with the beasts, Ellsworth pulls the stranger forward by his lapels. Nighttime lags around them, and moments feel long and broad and full of time that will be paid for in the light of the morning. The stranger tilts his head, to one side, the other. Ellsworth bumps his fist up against the fella's chin, tough skin to thick beard, and the stranger flinches as he never would have from gun or knife. In his eyes now, guilt as well, twisting, like a rope to hang hisself. Ellsworth shakes his head.

"You ain't getting to be in the way of escapin' now, friend," Ellsworth whispers, into the stranger's beard.

"Ain't no escape now," the stranger says. "This is the last fucking stop on the fucking railroad, Mister Ellsworth."

"How ... how'd you know -- ?"

"I have ears. I listen. I find myself also able to remember what I hear and retrieve such information that may benefit me at a later date."

"You _fucking_ cocksucker," Ellsworth says, grinning.

The stranger smiles and Ellsworth feels something in his gut twist right the fuck around. Hands on lapels, his own fucking arms shoved up against the fella's chest, flush to the trunk. It's warm there, warm against the cold. The stranger shifts one way and Ellsworth shifts to meet him - their lips crushed up together, bloodied and black, open like a window into the night. Ellsworth tastes the whiskey and the despair and both taste fucking good to him. He gasps for air to suck down into his throat, pulls away, hangs his head. The stranger pauses, like as to a new strange statue in the middle of the street. He breaks this to raise a hand to Ellsworth's shoulder, to squeeze it swift and sharp like friendship, and then ... he disappears, back into the night.

Ellsworth stares, something lost and uncertain, fading back into the shadows.


End file.
